In June 1989 President Bush proposed sweeping revisions to the Clean Air Act....(T)he President proposed legislation designed to curb three major threats to the nation's environment and to the health of millions of Americans: acid rain, urban air pollution, and toxic air emissions. The proposal also called for establishing a national permits program to make the law more workable, and an improved enforcement program to help ensure better compliance with the Act.

By large votes, both the House of Representatives (401-21) and the Senate (89-11) passed Clean Air bills that contained the major components of the President's proposals. Both bills also added provisions requiring the phaseout of ozone-depleting chemicals....The Senate and House bills also added specific research and development provisions, as well as detailed programs to address accidental releases of toxic air pollutants.

....The President received the Bill from Congress on November 14, 1990 and signed it on November 15,1990.

American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) has spent more than $16.3 million in 2010, including $3,005,540 on a national ad and buys in Washington, D.C., Montana, and Texas over the last three months. The group has budgeted $20 million for online campaigns. This Big Coal front group is infamous for its forged letters to members of Congress opposing clean energy and climate legislation that resulted in a congressional investigation.

In filing for a preliminary injunction in U.S. District Court, the government cites persistently dangerous conditions in Massey Energy's Freedom Mine No. 1 in Pike County....The Freedom Mine employs about 130 miners and was cited for safety violations more than 700 times this year alone.

Coal-fired power plants are commonly identified as the nation's biggest emissions villain. But that notoriety hasn't slowed the rush to build them in Texas, where there are nearly 30 coal plants either operating, permitted or proposed.

What has given many folks pause is the amount of water consumed by the plants.

Thermoelectric power plants - those that use heat to generate power, such as nuclear, coal and natural gas - are the single largest user of water in the United States. In Texas alone, they consume 157 billion gallons annually - enough water for more than 3 million people, each using 140 gallons per day, a recent University of Texas at Austin analysis found.

"The Sierra Club applauds this stopgap measure, but it is not enough," said Pennsylvania Sierra Club Director Jeff Schmidt. "We are appalled that the Pennsylvania Senate failed to pass a natural gas severance tax, a state forest protection bill, or other Marcellus gas-related legislation before adjourning. Senate leadership has chosen to put political campaigning ahead of the needs of the people of Pennsylvania."

"We are delighted with this solar power project in the two south Houston schools -- It not only demonstrates the best direction for Texas clean energy future, it also provides real benefits to the schools and the young people," said Sierra Club's Jennifer Powis. "The school district is expected to save over $10,000 annually in reduced electricity bills and the students will study and learn how solar power works."

• Despite federal government inaction on climate and energy policy, states are moving forward and advancing energy efficiency policies and programs in an effort to create jobs and stimulate their economies during a period of considerable economic uncertainty.


• Top ten states: California, Massachusetts, Oregon, New York, Vermont, Washington, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Maine


• Most improved states: Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Alaska.


• The Southwest region of the U.S. has demonstrated considerable progress. For the first time, Utah and Arizona climbed into the top twenty states. These states and several more that have improved their rankings have made progress in increasing investments in utility energy-saving programs, expanding state government initiatives, and adopting better building codes.


• California has retrained its #1 ranking for the fourth year in a row, outpacing all other states in its level of investment in energy efficiency across all sectors of its economy.


• Massachusetts has edged closer to the top spot after improvements in utility efficiency programs, transportation efficiency, availability of state-sponsored initiatives, and major plans to increase the breadth of its efficiency efforts in the next few years.


• State budgets for energy efficiency in 2009 are almost double the level of spending in 2007, increasing from $2.5 billion to $4.3 billion. Reported electricity savings across all states increased 8% between 2007 and 2008.


• Twenty-seven states have adopted or have pending Energy Efficiency Resource Standards (EERS) that establish long-term, fixed efficiency savings targets – double the number of states in 2006. These states account for two-thirds of electricity sales in the U.S.


• Twenty states have either adopted or have made significant progress toward the adoption of the latest energy-saving building codes for homes and commercial properties – double the number of states in our 2009 Scorecard.


• While steady progress on energy efficiency is evident across most of the country, several leading states, including Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire, and the District of Columbia, have made plans to divert millions of dollars of energy efficiency funds to balance the budget or reduce deficits, robbing their citizens of future energy savings and a more secure energy future.


• While federal transportation efficiency policy has progressed significantly this year with the adoption of new fuel economy standards and plans to set standards out to 2025, states are taking the lead to fill in the gaps in transportation opportunities.


• California, Massachusetts, and Washington have implemented transportation-specific greenhouse gas reduction targets while several other states have adopted policies to encourage the creation of compact and transit-oriented communities.


• The injection of more than $11 billion of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds directly to state energy efficiency has helped stimulate significant progress in funding and creating new energy-saving programs that are saving consumers' money and putting people to work.

• Activists in Minneapolis, Minnesota are hosting a public transit outing and rally to highlight how to take public transit to green space around the city.
• The local Sierra Club group in Binghamton, NY is organizing a Global Work(out) Party to ditch the car and get active on bicycles - a talk on bicycling with the mayor and other officials will be followed by a group bike ride along the river.
• In Las Vegas, Nevada, activists are hosting a Walk Party to raise awareness for livability in the city.

1. The three poorest counties in America are all in Appalachia's coal country and have given for decades at the altar of King Coal. And while the coal barons are richer, the counties have nothing but rampant poverty to show for the toxic mess Peabody and its ilk have left behind. Just which country is Peabody imagining aspires to be dominated by coal and look like the poorest parts of Appalachia or the Southern Illinois coalfields?



2. Last month the Clean Air Task Force released a new report documenting that the fine particle pollution from coal plants causes upwards of $100 billion in health costs every year. These costs include asthma attacks, emergency room visits, and cancer. In addition to the Americans who are breathing coal's pollution and paying with health problems, all of us are also paying higher insurance costs and taxes to pay for coal's pollution.

"The greatest crisis we confront in the 21st Century is not a future environmental crisis predicted by computer models, but a human crisis today that is fully within our power to solve. For too long, too many have been focused on the wrong end game," said [Peabody CEO and Chairman] Gregory Boyce.

"For everyone who has voiced a 2050 greenhouse gas goal, we need 10 people and policy bodies working toward the goal of broad energy access. Only once we have a growing, vibrant, global economy providing energy access and an improved human condition for billions of the energy impoverished can we accelerate progress on environmental issues such as a reduction in greenhouse gases."

"Instead of plucking numbers out of the air, we should base policy on science and expert reviews of factors like affordability of technology, availability of low-carbon fuels and the state of the electric infrastructure."

• Transportation consumes more than 70% of the 19 million barrels of oil used daily in the U.S. One barrel holds 42 gallons, meaning that we use roughly 557 million gallons of oil for transportation each day.


• The BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster spewed nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico - that's just over a quarter of the amount of oil we use in the United States each day.


• Fully one quarter of our nation's roads and bridges are in disrepair, and the Highway Trust Fund, which is financed by the gas tax to take care of our roads, no longer has enough money to cover the costs.

In a diplomatic visit turned tar sands marathon, Nancy Pelosi was in Ottawa yesterday with other top democratic officials, including Ed Markey, to meet with industry and environmental groups following their dinner with Canadian premieres from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec last night.

Her meetings included face time with three top Canadian environmental activists, and two tribal leaders from the Chipewyan and Athabascan First Nations. As the speaker and top lawmakers weigh the decision to approve or deny the Keystone XL pipeline, the critical meeting with those directly affected by tar sands provided an on the ground account of just how damaging tar sands can be. Speaker Pelosi was particularly moved by the presentation from Allan Adam, chief of the Athabasca First Nations, who spoke of the downstream health problems and increased cancer rates his tribe is suffering as a direct result of tar sands pollution.

These real stories are stronger than any Alberta public relations campaign can ever be, and Albertan premiere Ed Stelmach knows it. He was reportedly on the defensive at their dinner meeting Wednesday night in his attempts to paint the tar sands industry in a more flattering light.

After the presentations, the speaker’s told environmental and tribal leaders that “taking action on climate change was a major priority”, and both Markey and Pelosi affirmed their personal commitment to reducing our damaging reliance on fossil fuels.

According to Graham Saul, director of Climate Action Canada, Pelosi “..spoke very eloquently about the moral imperative for action on climate change in terms of how we owe it to future generations, and she spoke clearly about God’s creation and the need to respect and honor that.” (quote from Globe & Mail)

As the speaker and her fellow leaders return to Washington in the coming weeks, we hope these meetings will impress upon them the need to take decisive action to stop the poisoning of Canadian air and water, mitigate the risk to American communities from continued pipeline spills, and work to end our reliance on fossil fuels by saying no to the Keystone XL pipeline.

Update 9/3: Gap, Levi- Strauss and Timberland have not specifically committed to eliminating “tar sands oil” from their fuel sources, but each have committed in their own way to reducing the environmental and social impacts of their fuels. Any action to reduce environmental and social impacts of fuel choices must consider the significant impacts of tar sands, and give preference to suppliers who avoid it, but these companies are not specifically targeting tar sands fuel for a boycott. Walgreens, however, has made an explicit move away from tar sands oil, and has directed its suppliers to source non-tar sands fuels.

Original Post: The pen is mightier than the sword, but the purse may sometimes be mightier than the pen. Major US corporations are adding market pressure to the growing wave of opposition against tar sands expansion, giving tar sands producers a fresh reason to consider the consequences of their poor environmental street cred.

Whole Foods Market and Bed Bath and Beyond joined a list of six major Fortune 500 companies, including Gap, Timberland and Levi Strauss, committed to reducing the environmental impact of their fuel sources. Walgreens also recently announced it will avoid purchasing tar sands oil to fuel its distribution network.

Federal Express also voiced concerns over the ‘environmental and social impacts’ of the fuel it sources, and committed to address them. Being the dirtiest fuel on earth, tar sands oil certainly makes the short list for these categories.

These companies are throwing the weight of their purchasing power behind the criticism of tar sands and the Keystone XL expressed by many Americans, including written letters from thousands of citizens, fifty members of Congress, and critique from major federal agencies like the EPA.

Forest Ethics, who organized the boycott campaign (and other successful efforts like it), says this is only the beginning, with a total of 13 companies expected to announce tar sands boycotts by the end of the year.

For an industry aggressively pushing to secure a leading role in the US energy market, businesses labeling tar sands oil as a “brand risk” is a major blow to the tar sands industry and its destructive practices.

As the old business adage goes, the customer is always right- and as the number one consumer of tar sands crude, US corporations and consumers need to be taking a stronger stance against products like tar sands that carry unacceptably high social and environmental costs. If consumers continue to demand a cleaner energy future, those who hope to profit from the vast American economy will have no choice but to clean up or clear out.

by Bruce Nilles, Director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign

Contrary to the impression you may have been left with after reading a recent Associated Press piece about the future (or lack thereof) of coal in this country, the reign of “King Coal” is ending.

Though the AP piece makes some good points (specifically, noting that “the process [for producing electricity from coal] has changed little since Thomas Edison built the first plant in 1882” and that even after $3.4 billion in stimulus spending, there is currently “no way of capturing carbon” from coal-fired power plants), the idea that coal-fired power is expanding as opposed to rapidly declining is inaccurate.

Just a few years ago, “King Coal” was hoping to build 151 new coal-fired power plants while the Bush Administration’s coal-friendly federal regulators were “on the job.” This was a troubling idea for many reasons. From the mine, to the plant, to the ash pond, coal is our dirtiest and most dangerous energy source. It causes four of the five leading causes of death in the United States, including heart disease, cancer, stroke and chronic lower respiratory diseases. It destroys mountains and releases toxic mercury into communities. The carbon pollution emitted by coal-fired power plants is responsible for more than 30% of our country’s total global warming pollution.

In response to this Coal Rush, the Sierra Club in 2005 launched a nationwide Beyond Coal campaign with a broad swath of allies to block these plans.

As of today, the Sierra Club and our allies have blocked 129 new coal plants from being constructed, keeping well more than 530 million tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. No new coal plants have broken ground since 2008 and clean energy is filling the vacuum, with record amounts of both wind and solar power projects up and running in 2009. Yes, there were some coal plants that sneaked through and came online in 2008 with enormous help from the Bush Administration’s coal-friendly permitting process. That number of coal plants, however, is a fraction of what was planned and represents significantly less than the growth in clean energy during the same time period- growth that would not have been possible if the energy market had been swamped with filthy coal. The wind industry alone added 8,300 MW to the grid in 2008- more than five times the 1,400 MW of new coal added to the grid that year.

Make no mistake, the Coal Rush is over. The costs of the plants that did make it through should serve as a reminder than no clean energy project has ever taken five years to build and witnessed 100 percent cost overruns. The steps to finally move America beyond coal have begun.

We are now in phase two of our efforts to dethrone King Coal, get our energy infrastructure out of the 19th century and build a modern and clean power sector. This phase involves retiring and replacing the oldest and dirtiest coal plants and opening up more market share for clean energy. Since January 2009, more than 8,300 megawatts of existing coal (about 16 average-sized coal plants) have been slated for retirement in the next decade. The tens of thousands of dedicated grassroots activists who first help to stop the coal rush are now busy phasing out outdated existing coal plants.

While we have made significant progress over the past few years, our work is clearly far from done.

It was an outrage when earlier this summer, corporate polluters relied on a minority of Senators to block action to cut coal plant pollution when conservationists, labor, veterans, communities of faith, small businesses and everyday citizens all agreed it was the right thing to do. Failing to address this problem puts all the collective future of our country, and our planet, in jeopardy. Scientists tell us that to avert runaway global warming we need to phase out coal plants in less than two decades.

Ending coal’s contribution to global warming, as well as the smog that plagues most of our cities, is a top priority for the Sierra Club, and we will continue to fight for the necessary changes in federal policy. With Congress stymied by a minority of Senators, we are engaged in other venues to address the litany of serious problems caused by coal.

Lisa Jackson at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is busy working on enforcing clean air and clean water laws designed to end the regulatory loopholes too-long exploited by King Coal. After eight years of Bush Administration backsliding and inaction, the safeguards seek to put public welfare back on top of the priority list. Among those safeguards are efforts such as:

• The Good Neighbor rule, which could help avoid 36,000 premature deaths from dirty air;
• The smog, or ozone, rule, which could prevent more than 5,000 heart attacks and up to 12,000 early deaths;
• The coal ash rule, which could keep known carcinogens from toxic coal leftovers out of our water.

Strong regulation of each step of coal’s dirty and dangerous life-cycle (from the reckless mining practices to the hazardous disposal of the toxic byproduct of the waste left over when coal is burned) is not only going to level the playing field between coal and clean energy, it is also to usher in a new era of American energy.

We know that continuing our dependence on coal chains us to dirty energy and prevents us from making the changes we need to bring about a clean, secure energy future. If our economy is to be revitalized by the clean-energy industry, if the health and safety of families is to be considered, if we want to have any hope of stopping the worst effects of climate change, King Coal’s reign cannot continue.

We have made unprecedented progress in recent years to prevent new coal plants and massive amounts of new pollution for decades into the future, but our work is not done. Whether it is pursuing federal legislation that will cut carbon pollution or pushing and supporting Lisa Jackson as she enforces the law to protect public health and our communities, we will continue the fight to move our country beyond coal.

CCS is Viable: There are no insurmountable technical, legal, institutional, or other barriers to the deployment of this technology.

A Carbon Price is Critical: Widespread cost-effective deployment of CCS is best achieved with a carbon price, but there are market drivers and actions that can and are taking place now, which are essential to support near-term CCS demonstration projects that will pave the way for broader deployment after a carbon price is in place.

Federal Coordination should be Strengthened: With additional federal actions and coordination, the task force believes our nation can meet the president's near-term goal and get 5-10 commercial demonstration CCS demonstration projects online by 2016. The report recommends the creation of a standing federal agency roundtable and expert committee to facilitate that goal.

Recommendations on Liability: The task force conducted an in-depth analysis of options to address concerns that long-term liability could be a barrier to CCS deployment. It concluded that open-ended federal indemnification is not a viable alternative but that four approaches merit further consideration: relying on existing frameworks, limits on claims, a trust fund, and transfer of liability to the federal government (with contingencies).

On 3 August, researchers at the Ecological Society of America conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, presented what they say is the first conclusive evidence of a direct link between this type of mining and environmental damage. Their research has teased apart the effects of mountain-top mining and urbanization on local water quality in West Virginia, and found that even relatively small mining operations can cause serious harm to ecosystems.

"Even at very low levels of mining we found a dramatic impact on water quality and stream composition," Emily Bernhardt, a biologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and one of the study's lead researchers, told Nature. The scientists have called on the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to tighten the water pollution limits faced by mining companies.

While risks to individuals are small and are dwarfed by risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure and obesity, the overall effect on the public is big, says Robert Brook, a cardiologist at the University of Michigan and lead author of the report.

Much of the worrisome data concerns "fine particulate matter" - tiny bits of soot that come from burning coal, oil, diesel fuel or wood, mostly in factories, vehicles and power plants.

"These fine particles get deep into the lungs," says Norman Edelman, chief medical officer of the American Lung Association....It's also possible that some fine particles seep into blood vessels and the blood itself, causing direct damage. Dirty air also may trigger irregular nervous system activity that affects the heart and blood vessels.

There are no end of scoundrels to blame for the United States' failure to address global warming: Climate-change deniers, obstructionists in the Senate, an apathetic public, even the recession. But looking at the big picture, director of the Centre for European Studies Daniel Gros finds one villain that stands above the rest.

"Why has every attempt to set prices for global carbon emissions failed?" he asks. "The answer can be found in one word: 'coal'."

His essay, "King Coal's Pyrrhic Victory," is short, so instead of summarizing it I'll just urge you to give it a quick read. His conclusion is not very optimistic. We failed after Kyoto, we failed after Copenhagen, and the chances of future failure are multiplying by the day.

It's official: China has now surpassed the United States as the world's largest consumer of energy by more than doubling its consumption over the last decade. Since 2000, U.S. per capita energy use has actually declined, while Chinese per capita use has nearly doubled. Even so, we still use four times as much energy as the average Chinese.

This is what it looks like summed up in graph form from the International Energy Agency. Bars are national energy use, dotted lines per capita use. It will take a long time for that red line and that blue line to meet.

Join the National Bike Ride to Support Climate and Energy Solutions
The nation's largest environmental charity bike ride and 'climate conference on wheels' comes to California! After two years on the East Coast, Climate Ride debuts Brita Climate Ride California 2010 this September 21-25, 2010.

Two hundred cyclists will pedal beautiful country roads 300 miles along California’s rugged northern coast from Eureka to San Francisco to raise awareness of clean energy, the climate crisis, and pedal power.

This fully-supported adventure raises funds for Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, Green America, and 1Sky. Climate Ride is the first multi-day, multi-city bicycle ride to address climate issues and highlight renewable energy solutions. The event also showcases that the bicycle is the ultimate carbon-free machine and a viable form of transportation. Participants can register online at www.ClimateRide.org.

"We have negatively impacted your lives and made a mess of your properties and waterways," said Patrick Daniel, Enbridge president and CEO. "We're now working around the clock to minimize the impact of that and clean up the area."

- A broader assessment of the need for this pipeline, including a "robust analysis of options for meeting national energy and climate policy objectives";
- A more thorough investigation into the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the project, including a consideration of Canadian tar sands development (which EPA asserts is an action clearly connected to building the pipeline and must be considered);
- A lifecycle assessment of "well-to-wheel" (greenhouse gas) emissions generated from tar sands;
- A better understanding of mitigation measures that could be taken to decrease the emissions from tar sands developments;
- An assessment of the air quality impacts of refining tar sands, and a more in-depth look at the environmental justice ramifications of these air quality concerns;
- A much more thorough emergency response plan, including a consideration of the specific impacts to water bodies or a leak or spill of the chemical dilutent needed to transport heavy tar sands oil;
- A consideration of the safety waiver [the Department of Transportation] is considering granting to TransCanada, with special attention paid to the sulfur content of the fuel and how this would impact the thinner steel which would be used if the waiver were granted;
- A complete assessment of all the project's impacts to wetlands;
- A consideration of the impacts of Canadian tar sands developments on migratory birds.

This is a guest post from Chip Gaul, Intern for the Sierra Club Good Jobs Retrofit Campaign.

In April, twenty-five cities and states received “Retrofit Ramp-up”awards from the U.S. Department of Energy’s stimulus funds (a competitive grant under the Energy Efficiency and Community Block Grant Program). These grants are beefing up existing programs and new initiatives set to launch this fall and winter that allow households and building owners to improve the energy efficiency performance of their homes and businesses.

New Sierra Club ED Mike Brune recently stated that we need to do more than simply fight the status quo of dirty energy and environmental degradation: we need to promote new solutions. Improving the performance of our country's 130 million energy inefficient homes (20 percent of global warming pollution) will help curb our dependence on fossil fuels and create quality jobs in a slumping economy and construction sector.

Even though retrofits produce many benefits for building owners- reduced carbon footprint, lower utility bills, and more comfort during extreme weather days- most people are unaware of local programs that help pay for energy-saving measures. Community-based organizations and local clean energy advocates in "Ramp-up" cities can help spread the word about these new programs and help deliver real energy savings by signing up their peers and neighbors, implementing solutions envisioned in ED Brune's remarks.

For instance, in Maine, where 75% of homeowners heat their homes with oil at an average cost of $2,000 per year, Maine Partners for Cool Communities is organizing canvassing and neighborhood events to teach homeowners about the benefits of home energy upgrades through Maine's Home Energy Savings Program with Efficiency Maine. Sierra Club has joined labor unions and business partners to host Clean Energy Roadshow events across the country. The Roadshow partners create an open forum for business leaders, industry experts, public officials, and stakeholder groups to exchange best practices and form new partnerships to rapidly build new clean energy industries.

Implementing these budding "Ramp-up" programs will help communities enter a new era free of pollution from dirty energy and booming with a clean-energy economy. Read about Sierra Club campaigns in a community near you.

So how come we've just had the largest environmental disaster in decades on top of record hot temperatures in much of the country and we still can get a decent climate bill past Congress? According to Jason Zengerle in New York magazine, it's because environmentalists are too nice:

Given how unsuccessfully the environmental movement has pressed the rational case for climate-change action, some activists are wondering whether rational, dispassionate thinking is overrated. Over the last few months, they have begun to subtly (and not so subtly) shift their messaging away from scientific, or even explicitly environmental, arguments and toward more direct, emotional, and, frankly, manipulative appeals.

Given that the facts are on our side, there's no reason that rational arguments for action on climate change can't also be direct and emotional. For example, take this new study from our colleagues at the Natural Resources Defense Council showing the 1,100 U.S. counties that could be at dire risk of water shortages in the next 50 years because of global warming.

From E&E Daily:

According to a 667-page draft of their latest scaled-down effort obtained by The Hill yesterday, Kerry and Lieberman would seek to cut utilities' emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. Those targets mirror the reductions required for capped sources under the "American Power Act" that Kerry and Lieberman unveiled in May.

Neither Kerry or Lieberman's office was willing to confirm the validity of the circulated draft.

The draft was the second utility-only bill to surface yesterday, following a 50-page draft from Bingaman that would also cut utilities' emissions 17 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels and 42 percent by 2030. Utilities that emit more than 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent per year would be under the cap starting in 2012, and large manufacturers could opt in to the program (Greenwire, July 13).

Meanwhile, Senator Harry Reid is pledging that any climate & energy bill that comes out will include a measure on greenhouse gas reductions. From The Hill:

Reid’s pledge, however, left major questions about the scope of the utility plan and steered clear of any details. He declined even to use the words "carbon" or "greenhouse gases," vowing instead to target "pollution."

It's getting tense on Capitol Hill with all this climate and energy legislation wrangling. Stay tuned!

And here's a look back at the non-troversey over the hacked emails late last year that only fueled the distortions of climate deniers but did nothing to reverse the scientific evidence. It did, however, result in a flurry of death threats in the email inboxes of scientists.

You might notice that these suggestions are not anything new. But walking the talk a little at a time will go a long way. And if you're frustrated by the slow political process in Washington, click here to take action. Have a happy and safe long weekend!

There are going to be seven or eight sessions across the country after next week's hearing in L.A.: Florida, New York, Colorado, Nebraska, North Carolina, for example. They’ll probably run one or two a week till the end of August. The Interior, the EPA, and the Forest Service will look at the public feedback, put together a report, and base recommendations on what the public has to say. We want to augment that and put forth our vision for Resilient Habitats.

Q: Obama’s initiative is in coordination with other government agencies, like the Department of Defense, Department of Commerce, and Housing and Urban Development, among others. Why?

The Sierra Club of all the environmental groups is probably best positioned for these efforts because of our Building Bridges to the Outdoors program and getting youth outside, and our Military Families Outdoors program. The Department of Interior in particular is very eager to work with us because they see it as part of their own campaign for the Obama Administration to pursue.

Such arrogance suggests a blatant disregard for the impact of [Massey's] mining practices on our communities, residents and particularly our children. These are children's lives we are talking about.

Change has been a constant throughout the history of our coal industry. West Virginians can choose to anticipate change and adapt to it, or resist and be overrun by it. One thing is clear. The time has arrived for the people of the Mountain State to think long and hard about which course they want to choose.

To be part of any solution, one must first acknowledge a problem. To deny the mounting science of climate change is to stick our heads in the sand and say "deal me out." West Virginia would be much smarter to stay at the table.

The Murkowski "Disapproval Resolution" overturns the "endangerment finding." This in essence is like voting to assert that there is no climate change or global warming going on, and to dismiss scientific facts that already exist.

I admire the determination and dedication that Ed and Debbie Wiley have shown. The Bible teaches that if we have faith of a mustard seed, we can move mountains. I believe that the Wileys have that faith.

Above - Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune (left) and banner holders look back at President Obama's helicopter flies nearby during the press conference.

George Kohl, Senior Director of the Communications Workers of America, speaks at today's Beyond Oil rally.

All photos above by Javier Sierra. All photos below by Heather Moyer.

It's not officially Flag Day (that was June 14th), but on the National Mall in Washington, DC, today is a sort of an unofficial flag day.

We've got our Beyond Oil action up and flowing in the wind on the Mall - 10,000 flags that spell out "Freedom from Oil," that volunteers worked late in the night on Tuesday to stake into the ground.

These 10,000 flags represent the more than 50,000 people who took action on our Beyond Oil website asking President Obama to move our country beyond oil.

Glen Besa of the Sierra Club in Virginia took a great video of the flag planting last night, so take a look. (Sorry, the humidity got to our flipcam)

And if you want to see more of Glen's photos (all of the photos in this entry were taken by Glen), click here to see his online photo album.

The "Freedom from Oil" flag event continues today with a 11am ET press conference and all-day tabling to inform people about our country's oil addiction and asking them to join us in calling for a plan to get off oil.

We hope to have video of today's press conference later on.

A landmark study by 12 leading ecologists, hydrologists, and engineers concludes that the damage done by mountaintop removal mining (MTR) goes far beyond the already-horrendous practice of blasting off entire mountaintops and burying nearby streams under the rubble, referred to by mining companies as "overburden."

Photo by Vivian Stockman, courtesy of Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition

Proponents of MTR argue that the method is safer, faster, and cheaper than underground mining, and that the ecological impacts are localized and short-lived. Faster and cheaper it may be, but strip-mining, like deep mining, remains a dangerous profession, and the ecological impacts of MTR appear to be anything but localized and short-lived.

Photo by Mary Anne Hitt

Published in the January 8, 2010, issue of Science, the study found that MTR not only kills off aquatic life in the immediate vicinity of the "valley fills," but poisons the ecosystem well downstream, altering biological communities, reducing biodiversity, and causing a host of human health problems due to both waterborne and airborne contaminants. Below, contaminated water emanating from a valley fill in Wise County, Virginia.

Photo by Tom Valtin

The study, "Mountaintop Mining Consequences," represents "the first attempt to collect and assess the best available science on the potential ecological and human health impacts of mountaintop removal"

[All quotes and graphics that follow are taken from the article Mountains of Controversy by Tim Lucas, of Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment.]

"The current regulatory framework treats mountaintop removal as if it was a local disturbance and ignores any impacts on downstream or downwind ecosystems," says Emily Bernhardt, an assistant professor of biogeochemistry at the Nicholas School, who co-authored the study.

Bernhardt joined eight other Duke faculty members in a 2-year, $1.5 million project to map the extent of mountaintop removal mining in southern West Virginia, and assess its impacts on ecological and human health. Below, Bernhardt (at center) collects water samples with Duke chemist Helen Hsu-Kim and professor of earth and ocean sciences Avner Vengosh.

Photo by Megan Morr

One example of ecosystem damage the study uncovered was a 2009 fish kill in Dunkard Creek, in the Monongahela Mountains, that extended more than 30 miles downstream of the MTR site. West Virginia state biologists determined it was caused by toxins released by a species of algae normally found only in salt or brackish water. The algae were able to live in a freshwater stream due to significant amounts of mining salts from the MTR operation upstream.

"There's a saying: 'Dilution is the solution to pollution,'" says Bernhardt. "But the more mines we build, especially in the same watershed or on the same headwaters, the less dilution we have."

The Science study cites studies showing that chronic exposure to pollution in mining-contaminated air and water is associated with learning disabilities and lower birth weights in children, and kidney disease, breast cancers, and lung disease in adults. Compare map of mine sites in southern West Virginia, above, with chart showing cancer rates by county, below.

"There are a whole suite of contaminants that are elevated in the water and air," Bernhardt says. "It could be that none of them are over the legal limit, but individually or collectively these contaminants are generating significant chemical stress for organisms living in, or drinking, contaminated water or breathing contaminated air."

Learn more about mountaintop removal mining and take action to help stop it.

This announcement comes more than a year after a March 2009 U.S. District Court decision ruled these permits illegal.

The nationwide permits, created in 1982, gave a blanket authorization to mountaintop removal coal mines to dump their mining waste in streams and waterways. The District Court ruled that this overly generalized permitting process could not guarantee compliance with the Clean Water Act and that mining companies must apply for individual permits in order to be able to fill streams with mining waste.

• July 8 in Fort Worth, Texas
• July 13 in Denver, Colo.
• July 22 in Canonsburg, Pa.
• August 12 in Binghamton, N.Y.

Read Part IV: Public transit.
Read Part III: Telecommute.
Read Part II: Bike and walk.
Read Part I: Eat smarter.

"The president also renewed his call for bolder action to create a clean energy future. We share the President's commitment, and recognize the steps we take as a nation must balance America's environmental, economic, and energy goals."

We're guessing that you all are just like us here at the Sierra Club - you feel frustrated and helpless looking at all these terrible BP oil disaster photos.

The 5th Annual National Dump the Pump Day on Thursday, June 17, will give people the chance to make a statement in support of public transit and its ability to help our country reduce its reliance on oil...(T)he National Dump the Pump Day is a public awareness day that highlights the benefits of public transportation.

Public transportation is part of the solution for our country attaining energy independence as U.S. public transit ridership saves 4.2 billion gallons of gasoline annually. By using public transportation on June 17, people will be able to show their support for public transportation and also for our nation's goal of energy independence.

In addition, riding public transportation can help people save money. The most recent APTA Transit Savings Report showed that on the average, an individual can save can more than $9,000 a year by taking public transportation instead of driving a car.

More than 100 public transportation systems are participating in National Dump the Pump Day activities this year.

There's a whole new class of small, highway capable electric cars preparing to enter the American auto market. These "City Cars", exemplified by the Mitsubishi iMiEV and Mercedes' Smart car, are designed for commuters who are in need of good, inexpensive vehicles that do the job of transporting to and from work while using a minimal amount of energy.

Norway's Think (sometimes written as "Th!nk") is making a strong push for the American market with their recent announcement that they are building a manufacturing plant in Elkhart, IN near Enerdel, the battery manufacturer they have chosen to supply the 24 kWh packs that will power the cars.

Eight Plug in America members were recently asked to come to the Orange County offices of Think to test drive the latest version of this highly efficient EV. Linda Nicholes, past president of Plug In America, has written a great blog on the test drive, so I won't go into too much detail, but I will say that the Think impressed me with its overall performance and handling. It's very similar to the iMiEV in most all respects, and if both are priced appropriately, i.e., a few thousand lower than the Nissan Leaf, they'll sell very well.



Think isn't ready to announce a price yet, but they should by the end of the year. As we get into the era of expensive oil, city cars will gain an ever larger share of the market. Easy to drive, easy to park, and they use minimal energy to get the job done. Total cost of operation will be very low relative to even the smallest of gas burners.

(Like what you read? Visit my blog EVs & Energy.)

One reason the BP oil disaster makes us sick is the flood of heartbreaking images of dead or dying wildlife and despoiled wetlands coupled with an infuriating sense of helplessness. BP's “handling” the crisis, so there's nothing we can do -- right?

Wrong.

Oil has infiltrated our daily lives to an astonishing degree, but that doesn't mean we can't significantly reduce our use of it. Americans burn nearly 20 million barrels of oil every single day, most of it for personal transportation.

Even for the most committed environmentalist, to go completely oil-free overnight would be next to impossible. But taking the first step toward an oil-free future -- by simply reducing our current daily consumption -- is actually incredibly easy. It's also one of the most significant things you can do to wrest control of our energy future back from the Big Oil companies, which have enjoyed cozy political relationships and big government subsidies for far too long.

Each day this week, we'll highlight a different strategy for getting oil out our lives.

1. We Are What We Eat

If the oil disaster makes you angry and you eat a lot of meat, one powerful solution is sitting right on your plate. The U.S. meat industry is a major consumer of petroleum. In fact, raising one cow in a factory farm requires about 35 gallons of oil -- just under a barrel (according to The Omnivore's Dilemma, p. 84). Processed foods and corn syrup also heavily depend on petroleum.

* Cutting meat out of your diet for just one day each week is equivalent to driving 1,000 miles less per year.

* When you do buy meat, consider the source. Grass-fed, sustainably raised livestock are a breath of fresh air compared to the filthy, industrialized feedlots that have taken over the U.S. Click here for a directory of responsibly raised meat.

* Location matters. The label “organic” doesn’t necessarily mean “oil free.” Organic apples from Chile, for instance, use as much oil as non organic domestic apples because of the required transportation. Look for produce that’s grown as close to home as possible first, then consider whether it's organic or not.

* Farmers rule! The easiest way to get healthy and low-oil-use foods is to take you reusable bags to a local farmers' market. Most of the market vendors are local, seasonal, and sustainable.

Have you got other ideas for how we can get the oil out of our diets? Share them in the comments.

First, there is a very important vote in the Senate scheduled for Thursday - on Senator Lisa Murkowski's (R - Oil) disapproval resolution that would block Environmental Protection Agency authority to regulate global warming pollution under the Clean Air Act.

This move is a total sham - the Supreme Court ordered EPA to regulate carbon dioxide after EPA ruled it as harmful to humans. EPA Administration Lisa Jackson is speaking out in opposition to Murkowski's resolution as well.

Looks like Senator Murkowski just wants to protect Big Oil and Big Coal from cleaning themselves up. Have you asked your Senator to vote against this resolution yet?

In coal news, Duke Energy is taking a long hard look at buying coal from mountaintop removal coal mining operations....really? Ah, because they're estimating how much it would cost to stop buying MTR coal, I see. In any case, here's another interesting fact from that article:

North Carolina is one of the nation's top users of mountaintop coal. About half the electricity used in this state comes from coal-burning power plants, and about half the coal for those plants comes from mountaintop blasting.

You can do better than that, North Carolina.

Meanwhile, Massey Energy (owner of the mine that blew up and killed 29 coal miners in early April) is now blaming the Mine Safety and Health Administration for making them install a ventilation system that's unsafe. And it just happens to be the same system that was in place at the mine that exploded.

And while some dirty tar sands company executives are saying this Gulf of Mexico BP oil disaster means we should switch to the much safer tar sands oil for our needs, we're saying No Way.

If you're in Houston this Thursday night, then check out the Houston Sierra Club Chapter's Air Quality forum, where they'll talk about plans for the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. That pipeline would bring Canada's dirty tar sands (see the photo) into the U.S., and you can send in your comment right now opposing that plan.

We just released a major report on tar sands with several other organizations, too. Go read "Tar Sands Invasion" and educate yourself on why this dirty energy source is not a wise choice for the U.S. Here is a good column on this issue, too.

Finally, today Yale University and George Mason University co-released a poll on public opinion about global warming. The results?

Since January, public belief that global warming is happening rose four points, to 61 percent, while belief that it is caused mostly by human activities rose three points, to 50 percent. The number of Americans who worry about global warming rose three points, to 53 percent. And the number of Americans who said that the issue is personally important to them rose five points, to 63 percent.

The polling also includes numbers on specific policy points to stop global warming. Check it out.

Whether the groups are there in person, like Mennonite Disaster Service or the United Church of Christ (their work is here, here and here), or there are various religious groups - from Christians to Jews to Buddhists and more - all talking about a faithful response and the morality of our oil dependence, there's been an article about it and I've posted it on the blog in that group. Here are links to those blog posts: June 2nd post, May 14th post, May 11th post, and the May 7th post.

If you know of any other faith groups talking about and/or responding along the Gulf, let us know in the comments section.

The Climate Crossroads Bicycle haiku (bike-ku) contest ends Monday. It's easy to enter! All you have to do is join the Bicycle group, post a picture, and paste in a haiku. Since May is National Bike Month, the contest is all in good fun. But there are some serious prizes.

The top prize is a Breezer Uptown 8. And two runners-up will get a Nutcase helmet and a Kryptonite lock. Congressman Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, an avid bicyclist and author of H.R. 4722, the Active Community Transportation Act, will choose the grand prize winner. A panel of bike happy Sierra Club staffers will select the finalists next week.

Go ahead and enter our Bike-ku contest, but don't end up in court like these dudes on account of our contest. (It's pretty funny watching Judge Judy grapple with the price of this stolen bike -- check it out at the four-minute mark.)



(Via Gawker.)

1. Stop the gusher
2. Now is not the time for new drilling
3. Make the Gulf communities and environment whole
4. Demand more accountability and transparency from government and industry
5. End dependence on oil and move to a new clean energy economy

• Margie Alt, Executive Director, Environment America
• Lt. General John Castellaw, US Marine Corps
• Gene Karpinski, President, League of Conservation Voters
• Mindy Lubber, President, Ceres
• Kevin Knoblach, President, Union of Concerned Scientists

Announced Thursday, the hooking up of Tesla with Toyota took everybody by surprise. As part of the deal, Tesla is buying the giant NUMMI plant in Fremont, CA. This facility has an interesting history as told in this excellent piece from This American Life. Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, lusted after this plant early in the search for a manufacturing plant for their Model S, but the size of the plant at 5.3 million sq ft was too much for his needs. With Toyota's desire to build a low-cost EV using a Tesla designed drivetrain, all of a sudden, the numbers started to work.



According to GreenBeat, "Again, this is a pretty radical change of pace for Tesla — and it’s apparently come about very quickly. The company had been interested in the NUMMI facility for a while. It met with the plant’s representatives about three months ago with no results. About a month ago, Akio Toyoda, president and CEO of Toyota, approached Musk about a potential strategic partnership, and the two executives hit it off, Musk says".

Also from GreenBeat:

1. The joint development of a brand new,sub- $30,000 electric car, that will contain Tesla’s unique powertrain design, with everything else built by Toyota;

2. The purchase of the NUMMI plant, where Tesla plans to manufacture both its Model S sedan due out in 2012, a new $30,000 Tesla-designed vehicle, and the more affordable jointly designed “third-generation” vehicle;

3. A $50 million investment from Toyota into Tesla when the company goes public, probably later this year.

All in all, this is great news! We'll have more choices in the EV world in a few years. The Volts and Leafs will prime the market for late entries, and if we get a decent energy bill that assigns a price to carbon, then the cost of gas will rise making more and more people make the switch.

I've gathered a few videos from this past week about BP's oil disaster. In case you missed it, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball" to discuss, among other things, Rush Limbaugh's hilarity.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

BP's handling of its massive gash in the ocean floor has been less than exemplary. It's been a month since the deadly explosion. And one reason why there's so much outrage is that significantly more oil is flowing from the leak than what BP had claimed.

Even Fox News is dismayed by BP's conduct throughout this whole mess.



But senatorial candidate and Civil Rights Act critic Rand Paul of Kentucky seems to think that Obama's tough words for BP were "really un-American" (at around the six-minute mark).

New Truck Emissions Standards a Strong Start
New Rules Will Decrease U.S. Global Warming Pollution, Oil Dependence

Washington, D.C. – President Barack Obama is announcing today that the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are setting the first-ever emissions standards for medium and heavy duty trucks starting in 2014 and will begin the next round of standards for cars and light trucks for 2017 and beyond.

Statement of Carl Pope, Chairman of Sierra Club

With the oil disaster in the Gulf showing us of the true cost of our oil dependence, we applaud President Obama for this historic announcement to improve the fuel economy of trucks. We urge the administration to set the strongest standards to drive us towards an oil-free energy future.

We need to end our dependence on oil as quickly as possible and the steps the President announced today will help us move us closer to that goal while also cleaning the air we breathe.

After cars and light trucks, freight trucks are the second largest consumers of oil – burning more than 2.4 million barrels per day and growing. Right now these trucks only average 6 miles per gallon--a number that has remained virtually unchanged since the 1970’s.

We are thrilled that the administration is moving forward with the next round of standards for cars and light trucks. Setting standards for vehicles for the longer term is needed to push old technology out and bring in the new. We are pleased that California is joining with EPA and NHTSA in looking at technology, continuing its critical leadership in setting a high bar for reducing vehicle greenhouse gas pollution.

For heavy duty trucks, these standards are a great start, but it is important to begin moving more freight by rail. This will yield the greatest savings in both oil and global warming pollution.

As part of the plan to end our oil dependence, we are also calling on President Obama to issue a presidential moratorium on offshore drilling. We already have the technology to create a clean, 21st century transportation system that will end our addiction to oil. We've been talking about getting off oil for decades. The disaster in the Gulf is a wake up call. It's time to get off oil and on to clean energy.

Interestingly, the bill would make virtually no difference to the solar and wind industries. But that's not too surprising -- the Senate's renewable energy standard is woefully weak, and not likely to do much to improve on existing state standards.

The article, entitled "Meatless Mondays, A Movement That Has Legs," covers all the angles of why people are doing it, as well as the meat industry's paranoid response. An excerpt:

It's enough to make the meat industry nervous. Over the past year, lobbying groups including the American Meat Institute, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the National Pork Board and the Farm Bureau have launched a quiet campaign to try to reverse the momentum.

They have fired off missives to institutions that embrace the call to reduce meat consumption, and they have posted talking points for meat producers on the Internet. They are also making a final push to ensure that the government recommendation of two servings of meat per day remains enshrined in the new dietary guidelines that the Department of Agriculture will release this fall....

In response, the meat industry has stressed science...To environmentalists, they point to new research that challenges widely publicized statistics that livestock production creates more greenhouse gases than forms of automated transportation.

Nervous meat producers! Could be a good band name. Are you into Meatless Mondays?

First up is the "Advancing the Science of Climate Change" report:

The core phenomenon, scientific questions, and hypotheses (of global warming) have been examined thoroughly and have stood firm in the face of serious debate and careful evaluation of alternative explanations.

Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for - and in many cases is already affecting - a broad range of human and natural systems... It calls for a new era of climate change science where an emphasis is placed on "fundamental, use-inspired" research, which not only improves understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change but also is useful to decision makers at the local, regional, national, and international levels acting to limit and adapt to climate change....

The report recommends that a single federal entity or program be given the authority and resources to coordinate a national, multidisciplinary research effort aimed at improving both understanding and responses to climate change.

• Strong U.S. actions to reduce emissions will help encourage other countries to do the same.

• An inclusive national policy framework is needed to ensure that all levels of government, the private sector, and millions of households and individuals are contributing to shared national goals.

• The U.S. should establish a greenhouse gas emissions "budget" that sets a limit on total domestic emissions over a set period of time and provides a clear, directly measurable goal.

• The longer the nation waits to begin reducing emissions, the harder and more expensive it will likely be to reach any given emissions target.

• A carbon-pricing system is the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions.

• Carbon pricing alone, however, is not enough to sufficiently reduce domestic emissions.

"(B)oosting U.S. adaptive capacity now can be viewed as 'an insurance policy against an uncertain future,' while inaction could increase risks, especially if the rate of climate change is particularly large."

Conclusions from this report include:

• Policymakers need to anticipate a range of possible climate conditions and that uncertainty about the exact timing and magnitude of impacts is not a reason to wait to act.

• A national adaptation strategy is needed to facilitate cooperation and collaboration across all lines of government and between government and other key parties, including the private sector, community organizations, and nongovernmental organizations.

• We must identify vulnerabilities to climate change impacts and begin to examine adaptation options that will improve resilience.

• Adaptation to climate change should not be seen as an alternative to attempts to limit it.

These reports were requested by Congress and funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Academy of Sciences will release two more reports later this year as part of the America's Climate Choices series.

Shell Oil Co. pledged Monday to deploy a prefabricated coffer dam ready for "immediate" use in the event of a blowout, with a full-scale oil spill response within an hour.

In a letter intended to reassure federal officials that offshore drilling can safely begin in the fragile Arctic in July despite the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Shell said it also would be ready to apply dispersant immediately underwater near the source of any oil flow and would have a remotely operated submersible and trained divers at the drilling site.

After the Sierra Club and our partners began campaigning to end JPMorgan Chase's coal financing in September of 2008, JPMorgan Chase conducted an internal review of their environmental policies and financial support for coal companies engaged in mountaintop removal. Starting in 2009 JPMorgan Chase began an "enhanced due diligence" process for any potential financial transactions related to mountaintop removal coal mining, which means extra review of potential risks to their bottom line or their reputation.

As a result of that process JPMorgan Chase decided not to conduct business in 2009 with any coal companies engaged in "significant" mountaintop removal operations, such as Massey. While Bank of America and Citigroup have similar policies in place, JPMorgan Chase still lags behind Credit Suisse and Wells Fargo which have policies that end or phase out any financial involvement with companies engaged in mountaintop removal, respectively.

The bike-ku contest here on Climate Crossroads is off to a great start. We've had more than 60 entries so far and there are still more than two weeks left for people to enter.

Remember, by entering you get the chance to win a brand new Breezer Uptown 8 bicycle. Runners-up will get a Kryptonite lock and a Nutcase helmet. A panel of bike-commuting Sierra Club staffers will pick the finalists and the winner will be selected by Congressman Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, founder of the Congressional Bicycle Caucus.

All you have to do is join the Bicycle group; post a picture; write a haiku. Your deadline is May 31. For more details visit the Bicycle group.

Click here to read all about the BP-disaster protests that took place late last week. Great pictures!

Join the BP Oil Disaster group here on Climate Crossroads for all the latest on the disaster and the clean up.

(Thanks Nicole!)

[ editor's note: On Earth Day Oliver Bock, a Sierra Club member, and his sister, set off on a cross-country adventure on electric bicycles. Follow Oliver's journey at his blog. We will be posting some of his writings here as well. And join the Bicycle group here on Climate Crossroads.]

The mayor of Flagstaff tries out an electric bike ... and likes it!

Cruising through the high desert.

UPDATED:

• Dr. F.E. Beck - Associate Professor, Texas A&M University
• Mr. Danenberger - Former Chief, Offshore Regulatory Program, Minerals Management Service
• Mr. Lamar McKay - President and Chairman , BP America, Inc.
• Mr. Steven Newman - President and Chief Executive Officer, Transocean Limited
• Mr. Tim Probert - President, Global Business Lines; Chief Health, Safety and Environmental Officer, Halliburton

The Sierra Club has been holding a series of "Clean It Up!" events around the country calling on BP to clean up the disaster and demanding an end to new offshore drilling. Citizens have already turned out for rallies in Florida, Virginia, Seattle, New Hampshire, Michigan, and Houston.

On Saturday in New Orleans, the Sierra Club joined with fishing industry representatives, Gulf Coast leaders, and a crowd of more than 200 concerned citizens at a rally in support of Gulf Coast communities impacted by the BP Disaster.

"We are here to urge that President Obama dedicate every necessary resource his disposal to contain the well and stop the flow of oil," said Sierra Club president Allison Chin. "We need to clean up this disaster. The people who live in the Gulf Coast are looking at sweeping job losses and a destroyed ecosystem."

Last Thursday in Houston our Lone Star Chapter also held a brief presser and gathering outside an oil industry conference to call for more clean energy. They started the presser off with a fake speech from a fake oil industry spokesperson, "Oilivia Blackwater." Here's video of that:

Then the press conference got serious, as the group called for no more oil drilling, including a speech from a shrimper who spoke of the oil disaster's impact on her industry.

That message is present at all the "Clean It Up" rallies. "Offshore drilling is dirty and dangerous. This disaster could happen in Virginia, or California, or anywhere offshore oil rigs are allowed. We need an end to all new drilling off America's coasts. But that's not enough," said Chin at the New Orleans rally.

"We need our leaders to deliver a plan to get America off of oil and onto a clean, efficient, 21st century transportation system. We need to clean up the Gulf Coast, and we need to clean up America’s energy."

There are more clean energy rallies and events coming up to counter this terrible oil disaster - are you going to one? You can even sign up to host one!

New Orleans photos by David Graham-Caso. Houston photos by Zac Trahan.

PBS is providing a widget that displays a ticker meauring the amount of oil that BP's disaster has pumped into the Gulf. We've embedded it into the BP Oil Disaster group here on Climate Crossroads. So check it out. Join the group for more updates and correspondence from the ground.

Halt U.S. Offshore Drilling After BP Oil Spill: Michael Brune
May 05, 2010, 9:30 PM EDT

May 6 (Bloomberg) -- The death of 11 oil workers and the devastation of the Gulf Coast’s ecosystems and economy by the toxic sludge gushing from a BP Plc accident site is a tragedy that may well change the course of our nation. Americans are horrified. Leaders who had been willing to give offshore drilling the benefit of a doubt have abruptly changed their minds, including California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said he no longer supports a plan to allow limited drilling for oil off his state’s coast.

They’re right. There is no safe way to drill for oil in oceans. This disaster is an impetus to halt our dependence on oil completely and move to a clean energy future fast.

Thanks to the Internet, you don't need a time machine to look back at what happened after the infamous Exxon Valdez spill of 1989. Exxon fought tooth and nail in the court system and basically got away with a slap on the wrist. After years and years of litigation, the Supreme Court two years ago sided with Exxon and reduced the previous ruling of $2.5 billion in punitive damages to a paltry $500 million. And these days, Exxon's pockets are blooming again.

Obama swears BP will pay for this one. But can we be so sure? Take action and tell your representatives that additional offshore drilling is no longer acceptable.

We're also hearing that the smell of the oil is very apparent in coastal Louisiana now, too - this HuffPost article seems to confirm that one.

Peabody's Air Quality No. 1 coal mine in Knox County, Indiana, tops the U.S. in citations, with 1,419. The company's operation in Saline County, Illinois, has accumulated 1,217 citations, according to (Mine Safety and Health Administration) data.

The Knox County mine has more than twice the number of citations as the Upper Branch mine in West Virginia that was the site of the terribly sad mining disaster earlier this month. This track record of unsafe mines certainly does not support Mr. Palmer's claims that Peabody cares about safety.

Later in the debate, Mr. Palmer said that it is safer to work in mine than to work at Wal-Mart. I have to disagree, and I think most Americans would, too, especially after reading this article in USA Today about how "(d)ays missed because of serious injuries in the nation's mines have spiked sharply this decade."

Mr. Palmer's second inaccurate statement last night was that Peabody has not participated in mountaintop removal coal mining since he’s been there. Mountaintop removal is the irresponsible practice where mining companies blow the tops off mountains to reach a thin seam of coal and then, to minimize waste disposal costs, dump millions of tons of waste rock into the valleys below, causing permanent damage to the ecosystem and landscape.

Despite Mr. Palmer's claim that Peabody does not partake in this hazardous mining practice, the facts show that he joined Peabody in 2001, and up until 2007, Peabody owned mountaintop removal coal mines in West Virginia and Kentucky.

Our country can do better than coal, and our college campuses for sure can do better than coal. I really enjoyed the time spent talking to the students at Washington University about the need to switch from coal to clean energy, and about not believing the 'green' coal babble the industry is spouting now.

I was also inspired to see so many young people at the debate last night who believe that our nation can and should be powered by clean energy. We even got a great example of that belief today when the Obama Administration approved the Cape Wind offshore wind project in Massachusetts. These students are a great reminder that our future is bright.

After the debate, this bright future was highlighted by student and debate organizer, Arielle Klagsbrun. "Our struggle to remove coal’s influence from our campus is a struggle going on all across America, and we will succeed," Arielle said in a press release the students put out earlier today. "In six years, our generation, the millennial generation, will make up one-third of the voting population. We are not asking for an end to coal, we are ending it."

If you missed last night's Great Coal Debate between Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign Director Bruce Nilles and Peabody Energy VP Of Government Affairs Fred Palmer, Ustream TV recorded it. Click here to watch it.

Here's an article on the debate, and here are some photos. Did you watch the debate? What did you think?

Update: Here's the video. Enjoy.

Here are two more huge items of news interest to tell you about today. First - what are you doing at 6pm ET today (5pm CT, 4pm MT, 3pm PT)? If you're not at Washington University in St. Louis watching this in person, you can watch it online. It's the Great Coal Debate between the Sierra Club's Bruce Nilles (director of our Beyond Coal Campaign) and Fred Palmer, VP of Government Relations for Peabody Energy.

This will be a fantastic debate, for sure. Bruce has already greased the wheels for it with this OpEd in the Wash. U. student newspaper. To watch the debate online, simply go to one of these three websites: the Sierra Student Coalition website, the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign website, or UStream.

Our own Bruce Nilles (now Sierra Club Deputy Conservation Director and former Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign Director) spoke at the conference and got the crowd roaring.

The Sierra Club also had a booth on the Mall during the rally to educate folks on all sorts of issues.

Treehugger also has a good write-up of the rally, including photos.

Bernard Brown of Philadelphia is the founder of the PB&J campaign, an online-based non-profit supported by Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs. The campaign’s goal is to reduce people’s carbon footprint through a simple message about food. According to the campaign, a plant-based lunch like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich will “reduce your carbon footprint by the equivalent of 2.5 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions over an average animal-based lunch like a hamburger, a tuna sandwich, grilled cheese, or chicken nuggets.” Take a PB&J pledge and read my interview with Brown:

When did the PB&J campaign start?

The Web site launched February 2007.

Do you have a staff?

It’s pretty much just me. We have a handful of loyal volunteers.

Do you do events and go to schools or is this all online?

We’ve been starting to do more events lately. For example we were at a Whole Foods in Philadelphia for PB&J Day, which was April 3rd.

Where did the idea of using peanut butter and jelly sandwiches come from?

We had an idea of doing a peanut and jelly eating contest. We would then figure out the impact of that. I was coming out of finishing a master’s degree and I had been to lectures about the impact of the poultry industry on the Chesapeake Bay. This impression was that the impact of livestock production was under-discussed. The contest didn’t end up happening, but we did all this research for it, so we launched the website.

You can do any food, really. You can do a pinto bean campaign. But it doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. PB &J is all-American, comfort food. I remember in college I ran out of money once and I just stockpiled bread, peanut butter, and jelly for a few weeks.

Are you a vegetarian?

I’ve been vegetarian for a while, but I’m not vegan. One of the things about this concept is that in practice, someone who’s not vegetarian at all and doesn’t tend to eat much red meat might have a lower footprint than a vegetarian who eats a lot of cheese. The idea here is a plant-based focus. It was never a question of vegetarianism as much as a shift in how one eats. If you’ve ever been a vegetarian or a vegan, you learn that eating animals is a luxury. It then becomes easier to conceptualize shifting to a plant-based diet.

Talk about the tone of your campaign. When it comes to eating, people are more sensitive than issues like car emissions and energy.

Step one is to not tell people what not to eat. If you can show how they’ve already been taking environmental actions and that they can do it more often, you can give them a sense of accomplishment. For example, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which they already like and eat, or something else simple like oatmeal, is a great action. And also, trying to do it in a positive tone. People kind of get in a shell about yet another diet and they tune it out. We try real hard to make this a fun and encouraging concept. This isn’t about hardship and self-denial.

What kind of criticism do you encounter?

You see it more in comments on news stories about the campaign and they see it as a plot or something. But those comments are so extreme and ridiculous that you don’t give it credence. I hear a lot from people who are not vegetarians and like the idea. That means it works in that it gets away from the black and white of either eating the standard American diet, which is heavy on animal products, or veganism. You can make a big difference on the environment with a small shift to something that’s plant-based. It doesn’t have to be a lifelong decision that you’re making.

Plenty of peanut butter products are high in sugar. Do you consider what kinds of peanut butter and jelly to use?

Not much. Sometimes on the blog we write about it. But when we get into the specifics about the sandwich itself – yes, it’s probably better to have natural peanut butter on whole grain bread with fresh fruit instead of jelly – we want to keep the focus on the concept. Whether it’s grabbing falafel or getting a bean burrito or tofu the next time you’re having Chinese food, it’s the idea of looking at whether what you’re having is coming mostly from plants.

(For more, visit ICLEI USA's Local Action Blog)

From the Green Boston newsletter:

On Earth Day today, Boston Mayor Menino and Chief Jim Hunt were honored to have US EPA's Assistant Administrator Gina McCarthy on hand to help them accept the recommendations of the Mayor's Climate Action Leadership Committee and the Community Advisory Committee. In a culmination of the committees' yearlong efforts to update the City's climate action plan, the summary report of their climate action recommendations was publicly released today at an event held at the Artists for Humanity USGBC LEED Platinum building in South Boston.

The report, "Sparking Boston's Climate Revolution," details progress toward Boston's goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at least 25 percent by 2020. It outlines the economic benefits of various climate actions, and presents new strategies for consideration, such as giving climate adaptation initiatives the same priority as climate mitigation, and promoting climate action at the neighborhood level.

>> View the Report

[ editor's note: On Earth Day Oliver Bock, a Sierra Club member, and his sister, will be setting off on a cross-country adventure on electric bicycles. Follow Oliver's journey at his blog. We will be posting some his writings here as well. And join the Bicycle group here on Climate Crossroads.]

The nerves are a'tingling.

We are not ready but hopefully ready enough. Unfortunately, today is filled with events leaving very little time for organizing. We've come to the point where our actions have very little control over outcomes so we'll put this show on the road and see what happens!

[ editor's note: On Earth Day Oliver Bock, a Sierra Club member, and his sister, will be setting off on a cross-country adventure on electric bicycles. Follow Oliver's journey at his blog. We will be posting some his writings here as well. And join the Bicycle group here on Climate Crossroads.]

Less than 36 hours to departure! Here is the latest episode of "The Green Riders Videos" showing us (Oliver and Catherine) practicing riding and talking at the same time!

While we are on the road we hope to publish video shorts of our experiences. Please subscribe to the Green Riders videos at youtube.com/user/TheGreenRidersVideos (click the yellow 'subscribe' button at YouTube.)

Last Monday, GM's Tony Posawatz, vehicle line director for the Volt, and Dave Barthmuss, GM's communications director, invited a dozen Plug In America members to Dodger Stadium for what turned out to be an exciting test drive of the Chevy Volt. Coming hard on the heels of our Nissan trip, it's clear the leading car makers bringing back plug-in cars are serious about soliciting input from the people who have the most experience driving EVs. That's a good sign.

We started off with a thorough explanation of the car including the charge port and 120Volt cord set with the standard three pronged plug. Given that the battery pack holds 16 kWh, but only 8 kWh will be usable (this is to protect the longevity of the pack), Level one charging on a 120V should suffice for most folks. According to Dave Barthmus, Level two charging (240V) will be available, but it's not been decided whether this will come standard, or be an option.

As for the price, Barthmus said that GM will announce this crucial piece of information about a month prior to the release of the Volt this fall. I hinted to them that they needed to be at least as low as $35K-$37K to be competitive, and lower would be better.

My first impression of the car was how nice it looked. When I first saw the body at Chris Paine'shouse during our Plug In America fundraiser 18 months ago, it was surrounded by a crowd of people and nose to nose to a Tesla Roadster. Here, however, I was able to get a good look, and I liked what I saw. Not too conservative and not too wild, not too big and not too small, a car most people would feel comfortable driving.

(by Martin J. Chavez, ICLEI USA Executive Director; Visit ICLEI USA's Loca Action blog for more.)

Politicians since Warren Harding have been vowing to “run government like a business,” usually with less success than advertised. Maybe the tired mantra should be retired—or updated to reflect the approach of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who recognized that even though government is fundamentally different than the private sector, it can be run with a corporate managerial mindset. The best example of this may be the most ironic, to some: the New York Mayor’s groundbreaking approach to sustainability planning.

Three years ago on Earth Day, the Mayor launched PlaNYC, a comprehensive, long-term sustainability plan that has become recognized by other cities not only for its exceptional achievements, but for the innovative process with which it was developed. Mayor Bloomberg championed PlaNYC and shepherded its creation using pragmatic principles borrowed from the business world: an emphasis on innovation, a disciplined focus on goals and cost-benefit analysis, and a commitment to accountability made possible by tireless efforts to measure and analyze data. A new case study, PlaNYC: The Process Behind the Plan, shares the full story for local leaders eager to replicate New York’s success.

Renewable energy, jobs, the Pentagon, the White House, radar signals. What am I talking about here?

Well, those things are all in a cauldron of controversy in rural Oregon, where the Pentagon is holding up a multi-billion dollar wind-energy project. The Pentagon seems to think turbines affect radar signals.

The Oregon project promises to be the largest wind farm in the world. It is projected to bring 16,000 jobs to the region. One reason why renewable-energy advocates are watching closely is because this conflict may have far-reaching implications on similar large-scale projects in Illinois and Texas. Here's AP's coverage. And here's the Washington Post:

Skye Krebs, a rancher whose land will hold part of the Shepherds Flat project, said he and other local residents are stunned by the turnabout.

"We don't take national security lightly," Krebs said in an interview. But, he added, "holding this project hostage at the last minute has caused a whole lot of hurt for a whole lot of people."

Less than two weeks ago, he said, one of the project contractors threw a barbecue for area residents. Krebs had started constructing a house with the "big dollars" he was getting for having wind turbines on his ranch. But last week, he told the men working on the house to stop.

"That's three jobs right there," he said. "I sent the people working on the house home last week because I just don't know how this whole thing's going to shake out."

The bad news is that in a warmer world, allergies are likely to get worse - and that's going to cost sufferers and the rest of us. A new report released on Wednesday by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) found that global warming will likely increase pollen counts in the heavily populated eastern section of the country and that the effect of climate change could push the economic cost of allergies and asthma well above the current $32 billion price tag.

• Gregory Boyce, President and CEO, Peabody Energy Corporation
• Steven F. Leer, Chairman and CEO, Arch Coal, Inc.
• Preston Chiaro, Chief Executive for Energy and Minerals, Rio Tinto
• Michael Carey, President, Ohio Coal Association

"All that we're asking is that the (Environmental Protection Agency) step back and reconsider its endangerment finding... There needs to be another independent review of the data to put to rest all of those issues." - Gregory Boyce

"The role for coal in the new energy age is greatly hampered by the regulatory assault waged by the Obama Administration and in particular, the Environmental Protection Agency." - Michael Carey

Because we know the four speakers will be spouting off some "great" lines about energy and global warming, we will be live-tweeting the hearings from our SierraClubLive twitter account. Follow along starting at 9:30am ET tomorrow!

• Gregory Boyce, President and Chief Executive Officer, Peabody Energy Corporation
• Steven F. Leer, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Arch Coal, Inc.
• Preston Chiaro, Chief Executive for Energy and Minerals, Rio Tinto
• Michael Carey, President, Ohio Coal Association

Since 1973, the San Juan Coal Company has dumped more than 40 million tons of coal combustion waste containing pollutants like arsenic, lead and mercury into massive unlined pits at the San Juan Mine, about 10 miles west of Farmington. The coal combustion waste disposed of at the mine comes from the nearby San Juan Generating Station, and includes various forms of ash as well as sludge from the scrubbers that remove air pollutants from the power plant exhaust. As a result of the lack of adequate safety precautions, toxins from the coal combustion waste have leached into nearby waterways and wells, endangering local residents, livestock, and wildlife.

"For years the San Juan Coal Company and others have dumped toxic waste into this mine without regard to what it was doing to those living downstream," said R.G. "Squeek" Hunt, a local sheep farmer. Water on Mr. Hunt’s property has been repeatedly polluted by the dumping of coal combustion waste in the area. "Thank goodness that somebody is finally going to make the mine accountable for its action."

Testing has shown that the levels of arsenic, lead, selenium, uranium, sulfate and many other toxins exceed safe levels in ground and surface water near the mine dump site. These pollutants have been shown to increase the risk of cancer, damage the nervous and reproductive systems, and cause other serious illnesses to people and animals.

Over the past years coal companies have been increasingly dumping coal combustion waste in open coal mines, like the San Juan mine, as a way to avoid the costs of landfill disposal, liners, covers and monitoring to make sure toxins don't leak out. As a result, the Environmental Protection Agency has found that water supplies in 24 states have been contaminated from coal combustion waste that was disposed of without proper safeguards.

Looking for something to do this weekend? Visit your local farmers' market, watch this video of sustainable chef Annie Somerville, and make yourself some yummy stir fry.

by Ryan Foshee, ICLEI South Central Program Officer

ICLEI, in partnership with Sierra Club, Public Citizen, and the Environmental Defense Fund, has been working closely with Texas local governments to explore the concept of property assessed clean energy (PACE) programs and how such programs might be implemented in the Lone Star state.

Since the passage of HB 1937 last year in Texas, which included language that enables local governments to establish PACE districts, a substantial amount of due diligence and education has been needed to kick-start PACE programs around the state.

Beginning last November, ICLEI and partners have been organizing and holding meetings for local government staff interested in PACE. The first meeting, held in Austin, was momentous due to the creation of the Texas PACE Partnership, a friendly agreement between local government staff to jointly explore the idea of PACE and share lessons learned. The idea is to dramatically reduce implementation time for interested cities and increase the quality of program design and management. Since that time, meetings have been held in Dallas and Brownsville to spread the word even further. Future meetings are in the works as well.

Just a few months after taking office, I also gathered the leaders of the world's largest automakers, the heads of labor unions, environmental advocates, and public officials from California and across the country to reach an historic agreement to raise fuel economy standards in cars and trucks. Tomorrow, after decades in which we have done little to increase auto efficiency, those new standards will be finalized, which will reduce our dependence on oil while helping folks spend a little less at the pump.

So my administration is upholding its end of the deal, and we expect all parties to do the same. I'd also point out: this rule will not only save drivers money; it will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil. That’s like taking 58 million cars off the road for an entire year.

• Automakers cannot buy their way out of compliance as they can under CAFE;
• EPA can set technology forcing standards;
• EPA addresses the 4 greenhouse gases vehicles emit (nitrous oxide, methane, hydroflourocarbons and CO2);
• EPA indicated its intent to make compliance transparent – and we look forward to how EPA addresses this issue tomorrow – we all deserve a clear way to judge how automakers are complying with the law each year, something that has been lacking under the CAFE program.

Gov. Schwarzenegger famously rides his Harley up the Pacific Coast Highway on weekends with his buddies, but last week, he took some time out of his busy schedule to talk about the benefits of zero-emission bikes when he showed off several Zero Motorcycles outside the capitol in Sacramento.

Zero seems to be gaining ground in this burgeoning market of quiet, yet powerful 2-wheel scooters and motorcycles. Several companies are vying for the upper end of electric motorcycle world, Mission Motors, Brammo and Honda among others. Zero, however, has been selling their super quick dirt bike for over a year now and have added a road version to entice commuters wanting some excitement in their ride to and from work.

I had the opportunity to ride the Zero a while back at Santa Monica's AltCar Expo and was thoroughly impressed. As a rider of the super smooth Vectrix Maxi Scooter, I was ready for some quick acceleration, but what I got was way more than I was prepared for. The 0-30 was a scary quick 2 seconds! I know, I know, we usually hear 0-60 times, but you have to experience this off-the-line speed on a virtually silent bike that weighs a mere 172 lbs to understand how cool that is. By comparison, my Vectrix hits 30 in about 4 seconds and weighs in at a hefty 465 lbs.

I'm looking forward to trying the Zero road bike next. Maybe I'll check them out at Hollywood Electrics, a new store specializing in electric bikes of all kinds.

For those who live in big cities in warm climates, the electric two-wheeler is a great option for getting from point A to point B with a minimum of energy or effort. Now, I'm gonna take a quick ride down to the beach for the sunset!

On the far right is Plug In America's super-effective legislative director, Jay Friedland. When you finally go to pick up your shiny new EV at the the showroom of GM, Ford, Nissan, Volvo, Mercedes, or any other OEMs making them, say a little thank you to Jay for the $7,500 federal tax credit and the $5,000 CA state tax credit ($1,500 for motorcycles :~). Jay was instrumental in making those happen.

(Like what you read? Read my blog EVs & Energy.)

If you want to hook your home up to renewable energy and solar energy isn't all that feasible, perhaps the answer is blowing in the wind. Ron Stimmel is a small-systems expert with the American Wind Energy Association. He took some time to answer questions about what a typical American homeowner needs to know about wind power.

When people think of wind power they think of vast farms with giant turbines. In contrast, small wind is something entirely different. Can you briefly define small wind?

We’re talking about individual turbines used for individual purposes. It's a lot like solar panels in terms of using it to offset your own energy. If you have at least a half acre or more of land and find yourself complaining about how windy it is all the time, then you're probably a good candidate for a small wind turbine.

But how do you know you have enough wind to justify a turbine? It's probably more than just licking your finger and pointing up.

There are people out there who sell and install them who are trained in wind resources and site assessment -- and they can take satellite imagery, survey land features on a particular lot, and give you a good idea of what your output would be for a given turbine at a given height.

As you would with any investment of that size, you want to make sure you do your due diligence. It's not terribly complicated. It's probably a lot easier than getting a new kitchen renovation. That said, it's not for everyone, especially if you live in the city.

You mention a half-acre, but what about people in the suburbs who have a sizable backyard but who don't own that much property?

Sure, a half-acre's just a rule of thumb. It really varies case by case. And not all properties come in nice squares. It's a good idea to contact an installer because there are a lot of variables. There's a list of equipment providers on our website that would be a good place to start.

Solar City installed the highly visible 35-kilowatt array on the roof and grounds of the church, which was the first project of any kind to be certified by the Fresno Green Building Incentive Program.

"The church helped us write the regulations for the incentive program," said its manager, Karana Hattersley-Drayton. "It is a real pioneer."

The dedication ceremony will include a blessing by the Rev. Bryan Jessup. Built with sustainable materials and technologies, the church is a Green Sanctuary, a Unitarian Universalist congregation that "lives out its commitment to the earth by creating a sustainable lifestyle for its members as individuals and as a faith community."

The church's solar installation is expected to offset more than 71,000 pounds of carbon dioxide in its first year, the equivalent of taking roughly 51,330 cars off the road for a year. Over its first year of operation, the installation will save the energy efficient church roughly $15,500 in PG&E utility bills and provide ongoing protection against rising electricity rates.

photo courtesy Zan Dubin Scott.

In Sept. 2008, Laura Love and her husband got solar panels for their four bed, two-and-a-half-bath home in San Diego. They couldn’t afford to purchase the panels but, because of a leasing deal offered by SolarCity, they live almost entirely off the grid thanks to a four-kilowatt panel system.

SolarCity, which operates in five states, provides panels at $90 a month, which includes free installation and no upfront charges. Read USA Today’s coverage of this deal here. Municipalities are providing similar deals. For example, San Francisco recently launched a finance plan that lets homeowners pay for panels through their existing property taxes. Click here for more tips on going solar. Meantime, enjoy our interview with Love on how she went solar.

Describe the system.

It’s a four-kilowatt system and the panels are fitted for your home based on your energy needs. The power that the panels generate is DC current, but the power you use in your house is AC current. The inverter box converts it so that you can put it into the main grid. It’s a beige box about two-and-a-half feet by four feet, and it has a little tiny display. It took the installers three days to set it up.

What has happened to your monthly bills?

The way San Diego Gas & Electric runs it is that we owe a bill once a year now. They do a net-metering account that we only pay in October. Through the summer we usually generate more than we use. Last year our total usage for the year came to $220, whereas before we installed the system, we paid about $130 or $140 a month. It depends on how much we generate and use. In the rainy months, we have usage. In the summer, we feed energy back into the grid.

Any rebates involved?

No. The owner of the system gets state and federal rebates. But what SolarCity did is take those rebates and factor them into the cost of the system and that lowered our lease payment. And those rebates amounted -- if I remember the paperwork right -- to about $7,000. That's a lot of money. But if you pay for panels straight out, the rebates are yours. Plus this year I'm filing for a credit on my federal return. There was a $1,600 deduction for energy-efficient upgrades.

The Governor's Energy Office has predicted the program could result in as many as 100,000 homes with solar panels, small wind turbines or other energy-producing devices.

The Farmers' Market group on Climate Crossroads is doing great stuff. The group uses its photo gallery to create a photo map that spots where its great photos were taken. To view the whole map, click here!

Six farmers' markets were added to the photo map yesterday! There are close to 90 markets from 30 states up on the map.

Remember when viewing the map to click on a basket to view the photo taken from the market. If you don't see your local market on the map, take your camera with you on your next visit to the farmers' market, snap some pictures, post it to the photo gallery, and indicate your market's location. We'll take it from there.

"How good will the business judgment of companies that make high-carbon choices now look in five, 10, 20 years, when it becomes clear that heavily polluting infrastructure has become deadly and must be phased out before the end of its useful life?"
- Todd Stern, U.S. State Department Special Envoy on Climate Change

Back before the spill in Kingston, I visited one of the nation's largest dumping grounds for coal waste - an impoundment site called Little Blue Run, near Shippingport, Pennsylvania. Little Blue Run is a huge, eerie lake filled with ash and sludge from FirstEnergy's Bruce Mansfield coal plant, a 2,490-megawatt giant that sits on the banks of the Ohio River. FirstEnergy recycles some of the scrubber sludge from the plant into wallboard, but the rest of it gets mixed with the coal ash and pumped through big steel pipes for seven miles and emptied into Little Blue Run. The sludge has a thick, pasty texture, but it's the color of the lake itself that's spooky: a luminous, metallic blue, with swirls of emerald green.

Like the vast majority of waste ponds in America, Little Blue Run is unlined - meaning there is no barrier between this toxic metallic stew and the groundwater beneath it. According to a report by the National Research Council, coal ash typically contains 24 different pollutants - some of them deadly, even in minute quantities. In humans, the toxins in coal ash can cause cancer of the liver, kidney, lung and bladder, as well as neurological damage in children. In animals, especially fish and amphibians, they can cause developmental abnormalities. The sheer quantity of toxic metals produced by a big coal plant is mind-boggling. At Little Blue Run, for example, FirstEnergy pumps 81,000 pounds of arsenic compounds into the pond every year. In its undiluted form, a thimbleful will kill you.

• Treat walking and bicycling as equals with other transportation modes.
• Ensure convenient access for people of all ages and abilities.
• Go beyond minimum design standards.
• Collect data on walking and biking trips.
• Set a mode share target for walking and bicycling.
• Protect sidewalks and shared-use paths the same way roadways are protected (for example, snow removal)
• Improve non-motorized facilities during maintenance projects.

see more Epic Fails

...here's another reason to use a bike when you can. Join our Bicycle group here on Climate Crossroads. The group has 500+ members and an excellent photo gallery.

If you have 30 minutes to spare and you really, really, really like to listen to people chat about clean energy, Bill Gates delivers. Here he is at TED2010.

California and the nation have a reason to celebrate. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) voted unanimously to pass a resolution that accepts compliance with federal greenhouse gas emission standards established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) fuel economy program as compliance with CA's vehicle emissions standards.

Sierra Club California's Director, Bill Magavern testified at the hearing applauding CARB for setting the example for the rest of the nation when it comes to setting standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions spewing from our passenger vehicles. The auto manufacturers showed up, but this time it was to applaud CARB and the US EPA for taking steps to set national greenhouse gas standards. In fact, the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers (AIAM) and Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers (AAM) both testified that they look forward to working on setting the next wave of national greenhouse gas standards for model years 2017 and beyond. Sierra Club California will be working hard to hold them to their end of the bargain.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions coming from our cars and trucks across the country could significantly clean up our air for our children and future generations, create new jobs and advance technology by creating a new green vehicle industry. Union of Concerned Scientists research shows that by setting high standards drivers could save tens of billions of dollars, curb US oil usage by 1.3 million barrels each day by 2020, and cut emissions that cause global warming by 217 million metric tons in 2020.

Next steps include the US EPA setting the final national standards by March 31, 2010.

My mission with the Sierra Club is to fight climate change by reducing Rhode Island’s carbon emissions. Since 42% of our State’s emissions are produced by the transportation sector, Sierra devised the Transportation Choices 2020 campaign to affect the greatest reduction. Essentially, Rhode Island needs to move away from its dependency on the car culture in order to do its part, and that means we need more options than just the car in the driveway.

Too often, we overlook biking and walking as viable alternatives to our automobiles, but the fact is we live in a tiny State where the power in our legs could easily satisfy many of our transportation needs. If we placed greater emphasis on designing our communities and the roads between them to be more walkable and bikeable, we could reap enormous rewards in the battle against climate change, at the same time encouraging much more healthy lifestyles.

Unfortunately, Rhode Island bikers and pedestrians are confronted by unfriendly roads, designed for the singular use of the car. There is a movement afoot to change our cultural disregard for walking and biking, and it’s called complete streets. The idea is to incorporate space for all modes of transportation into street design and to restripe our old roads so they meet everyone’s needs.

The project is part of the RE-Powering America's Land initiative, which aims to decrease the amount of green space used for development, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and provide health and economic benefits to local communities, including job creation.

The project will analyze the potential development of wind, solar, or small hydro development at 12 sites. The analysis will include determining the best renewable energy technology for the site, the optimal location for placement of the renewable energy technology on the site, potential energy generating capacity, the return on the investment, and the economic feasibility of the renewable energy projects. The 12 sites are located in Calif., Fla., Kan., Mass., Mich., Minn., Pa., Puerto Rico, R.I., W.Va., and Wis.

Environmentalists say the industry's reaction is blown out of proportion. Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope called the arguments about job losses "scare tactics." Ending "wasteful and unnecessary giveaways … will help correct some of the market distortions that unfairly advantage dirty energy at the expense of clean energy," Pope said.

According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, the oil and gas sector reported spending more than $168 million to lobby Congress last year on climate change, taxes and other issues, a 26 percent jump over $133 million in 2008. Energy industry spending last year dwarfed expenditures by environmental groups that reported $22.5 million in lobbying last year. That included $1.9 million from the Environmental Defense Fund and $2.2 million from the Nature Conservancy.

Exxon Mobil's lobbying bill was $27.4 million last year, while Chevron Corp. invested $20.8 million and ConocoPhillips $18 million.

The federal government is the largest single consumer of energy in the country. Taxpayers ensure that federal vehicles' gas tanks are full and the lights and heat stay on in government buildings.

President Obama hopes to save money and lead the country to a cleaner energy future by making the federal government a model. In October, he signed an executive order requiring that the government reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions by 28 percent over the next decade.

Obama also asked federal employees to participate in the GreenGov Challenge, through which they can submit practical ideas about improving sustainability and energy efficiency at government facilities. Yesterday, in a video posted on the White House's blog, Obama describes how successful the project has been thus far and calls on employees to put their ideas into action. The public is allowed to view the site (but not contribute), so even if you’re not a federal employee, head over to get some ideas for greening your own workplace. While you're at it, also check out the Green Life's tips for an eco-friendlier office.

Mahatma Gandhi brought the British Empire to its knees through the simple act of making salt. Gandhi’s Salt March to Dandi, began the non-violent revolution that eventually removed the British from power and paved the way for Indian independence. Nestled within this revolutionary act was the assertion that the people must control the basic necessities of their lives.

Gandhi’s aura endures at the Ashoka-Lemelson Tech4Society conference. This initiative aims to provide technologies for the benefit of society at the “bottom of the pyramid” (BOP) – the most vulnerable segment of humanity, that currently lives below the poverty line of $1.25 a day.

The Ashoka fellows have put together impressive initiatives of socially-minded, development-focused technologies for providing the rural and urban poor with the services they desperately lack. From health care to micro credit to job creation, Ashoka fellows are stepping in where society has failed – and are doing a remarkable job.

One of the most interesting applications of their social entrepreneurship, and the one that is so reminiscent of Gandhi’s Salt March, relates to renewable energy. Today the BOP pay an enormous tax related to a lack of development, particularly from clean and reliable energy. Whether it is indoor air pollution that kills children, or a lack of reliable lighting that halts educational advancement, this hidden tax overwhelmingly adds to the constant grind of poverty.

Ashoka-Lemelson fellows Sergio Losana from Yansa, and Harish Hande from SELCO-India revealed in their presentations how the centralization of renewable energy is replicating the power structure that has kept fossil fuel industries rich, while blocking the poor from achieving development. From the familiar power of entrenched interests, to the overwhelming struggle to develop targeted renewable energy options, these fellows are determined that renewable energy will transcend the bifurcated world of the have’s and have not’s by democratizating energy and empowering the poor.

Hanish and Sergio, in the true spirit of social entrepreneurship, gave the gripping account of a world where renewable energy accomplishes the task of placing power in the hands of the people – where it ought to rightfully be. This task accomplishes a myriad of development benefits, while reducing black carbon and the misguided calls for coal fired power plants in the name of poverty alleviation. Environmental protection, clean energy, and development are after all, inextricably linked.

Gandhi empowered a nation by making salt. Sixty years later these fellows are empowering the nation by generating and distributing clean, renewable energy for the BOP. Today it is not about making salt, it is about making light - and along with it opportunity.

The third and final revelation from this brutal economic storm is that we remain overly reliant on yesterday's energy production models.

Unsustainable fossil fuels power too much of our quality of life. In Portland, that also means coal: 43% of all the energy we consume in Portland comes from the bowels of Wyoming - railroaded to Boardman (an Oregon coal plant) and beyond and burned into the blue skies of Eastern Oregon and the Rocky Mountains, and outside the reach of the Clean Air Act.

Folks, we do such a good job at home — from bicycling to recycling and more. But we need to kick our coal habit. Portland General Electric, Portland's principal energy provider and owner of the Boardman plant, is headed in that direction. I applaud their plans to phase out the Boardman coal plant.

But remember it's about a lot more than just the right thing to do. The so-called 'right thing to do' tends to resonate more with those who have the luxury of alternatives that are often more expensive. Mike, who's concerned about his next tamale sale, shouldn't be expected to think about clean energy power. Mike needs a living-wage job.

So, here's the best part about our approach: Because we have growing wind and solar industries right here; kicking our coal habit means growing jobs right here at home. There's no way I'm going to let us miss this opportunity.

GLC VLOG 1 from Justin Guay on Vimeo.

"I've been hospitalized many times with asthma attacks. It's scary when you can't catch your breath. When I was young, going to the hospital with asthma was a monthly thing. Now I'm on an adult dose of asthma medicine and the only other way to manage the asthma is to limit my outdoor activities. That's hard to do at 14. My doctor's even talking to me about moving away from Houston's pollution when I go to college."

That's certainly telling! Read the whole column for more details.

Things are not always as they appear.

I quit meat for 2010 to reduce my carbon footprint. But this past week I've come to realize that vegetarianism is not a be-all, end-all. For example, the other day I noticed after the fact that the grapes I bought were from Chile. Whoops. And then I read Mr. Green's articles here and here about why purchasing meat from small farmers might be better than eating no meat at all. He makes a very persuasive "eat less meat" argument.

Meanwhile, I am in the middle of The Omnivore's Dilemma by food guru Michael Pollan. I was struck by the chapter about Big Organic and the industry's steady morph into something that resembles the conventional. I'm always leery of "organic" microwable dinners that I periodically see at my grocery store. But what Pollan writes here (p.182) really stuck out: